“Watch the Show, Play the Game, Change the World” is how “Defiance” bills itself, but the combination of video game and television could be a game-changer in its own right. Read more at paidContent »
Last summer, one woman’s Kickstarter project made her the target of a hate campaign — but the cybermob didn’t keep her from creating an original web series on female characters in gaming, which launched this week. Read more at paidContent »
Electronics Arts is about to release one of its most anticipated games – the new SimCity. As a self confessed SimCity addict, I think I am about to retreat into a city of my own. Read more »
The console era is over — or so a growing number of game-industry executives would have us believe. While social and mobile gaming have taken a sizable share of the video games market, there is room for growth for hardware, particularly in streaming technology and the emergence of open-source platforms. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Gaming consoles are still big business, especially when you consider that they also double as cord-cutting devices. But Sony’s Playstation 4 announcement was short on details and just plain long on everything else. Read more »
Early attempts at cloud-based video gaming were a flop. Roy Bahat, of OUYA, says it’s still a worthy pursuit, but should be based on a new generation of games built specifically to take advantage of the cloud’s supercomputing strengths. Read more »
As Pearson – along with the entire textbook publishing industry – rethinks its role in education, one of the company’s executives says it could look to build the core competencies of digital content creators like video game giant Electronic Arts. Read more »
Goko, a new HTML5 game platform, is giving developers a way to create, distribute and monetize their games across multiple platforms. The company is showcasing the platform with two new titles: Dominion and Catan World. Read more »
Ouya, a $99 Android-based video game console, has picked up more than $5 million in the biggest Kickstarter campaign to date. It’s also received plenty of doubts from skeptics as well. In an interview, Julie Uhrman, the CEO and founder, said Ouya is the real deal. Read more »
The independent film’s lifecycle has undergone a lot of upheaval in the last 20 years, but digital distribution’s truly disrupting things. Less than six months after debuting at Sundance, Indie Game: The Movie will be available for sale via iTunes, VHX and gaming platform Steam. Read more »
Apart of what it would do for Microsoft’s Xbox games business, the purported new hardware-and-services bundle, if successful, could hold significant implications for its broader digital living room ambitions as well. If Microsoft proves it can attach long-term service commitments to Xbox hardware, it’s no big ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Beat Hazard Ultra is an asteroid-style, shoot-from-the-middle, space arcade game for iOS that can satisfy the most extreme, old-school Galaga addictions. What makes Beat Hazard Ultra stand out is the fact that game play is set to your own music library. Read more »
Super Stickman Golf is a sports game that plays more like a platformer. Scoring is the same as in golf, but each golf course is designed more like a level from a Mario game than something you’d see on the PGA tour. Read more »
Throwing paper into trash cans is always fun, but doing it virtually on your iPad or iPhone in a whimsical, visually pleasing environment where you can’t get caught by the boss and don’t need a steady supply of real paper is even better. Read more »
Video gamers and Star Wars fans are a match made in heaven, but can they justify the development of what may be the most expensive video game in history? According to new data from Electronic Arts, “Star Wars, The Old Republic” will be a blockbuster. Read more »
Happy Cloud, a start-up which is trying to speed up game downloads and make them almost instantly playable like streaming gaming services using progressive download technology, has partnered with content delivery network Akamai to boost its performance and make games playable within a couple minutes. Read more »
The release of a short film set in the universe of Valve Software’s popular Portal video game series has people excited over the possibility that director Dan Trachtenberg could bring his vision to a full-length version. But is such a move really likely? Read more »
Nintendo’s investors think the company is wasting time and energy developing for its own devices. Instead, fund managers think Nintendo should turn its attention to developing for smartphones, especially Apple’s iPhone. Once you put all the facts on the table, it looks like the smart play. Read more »
As a gaming platform, iOS has really made great strides in the past few years. But what about the Mac? Has the Mac reaped any benefits from App Store gaming, or, if it hasn’t yet, will it ever? And does it matter to most Mac users? Read more »
Is the 3DS the device to lead Nintendo into another decade of growth and profitability? Probably not. With the gaming industry focusing more and more on tablets, smartphones and touchscreens, the company will almost certainly have to rethink its slightly antiquated business model to remain relevant. Read more »
TwitchTV just made playing video games a whole lot more lucrative: The site opened up its partner program, offering qualifying gamers the chance to run ads on and make money with live streams of their games. Some participants of the beta already quit their day jobs. Read more »
The second quarter of 2011 was a fast-paced one for the connected consumer segment, with every sector of the digital media landscape — music, e-books, online video and gaming — experiencing significant events and changes. Media consumption, purchase and management continued its shift towards the cloud, ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Electronic Arts announced it is buying casual and mobile game developer PopCap Games for $750 million as it looks to speed up its evolution toward being a digital purveyor of games. EA is moving quickly away to embrace the opportunity in social and mobile gaming. Read more »
Forget live music: One of the hottest trends in live streaming is competitive gaming, also known as e-sports. Gaming competitions attract hundreds of thousands of simultaneous viewers, and the events are streamed online by a number of sites that specifically cater to gamers and their fans. Read more »
The “uncanny valley”– the quality of an animation or robot looking close to, but not exactly like, real life — may be set to get even smaller. MIT researchers have developed new computing techniques for reproducing the slight natural blur of moving objects in animation. Read more »
Justin.tv has attracted tons of video gamers to the site, to broadcast and watch live streams of professional video gamers battle it out online. With that in mind, Justin.tv is launching TwitchTV, a new brand and site devoted entirely to live streams of video games. Read more »
Raptr, a social network for gamers, is showing some interesting ways in which it’s using what it knows about its members to create tailored experiences that cut through a lot of noise. And it’s showing how social networking can evolve to be even more personal. Read more »
Happy Cloud, a Cambridge, Mass. startup believes the key to accelerating online gaming of top titles is intelligent progressive downloads that leverage the cloud to make games playable within a few minutes. The goal is to make video game downloads as on-demand as videos on Netflix. Read more »
When the iPad first arrived, a lot of iPhone games got HD treatments. A little over a year later, and the opposite seems to be happening. Sword & Sworcery EP and Chicken Balls are both now on the iPhone after debuting on the iPad. Read more »
A new update for iPad game Real Racing 2 HD update provides a true two-screen experience across menus and in-game, and really shows what the iPad 2 is capable of in terms of becoming a force in living room gaming. Read more »
Game maker Valve kicked off a promotion today that allows fans to force the early release of Portal 2 if they buy a bundle of 13 independent games through its online store. It’s an innovative idea, though the execution makes the effort feel a little crass. Read more »
Rooster Teeth Studios already has one of the most successful shows on Blip.tv with the machinima series Red vs. Blue. But while they’re not afraid of the live-action world, they’ll still find a way to make their newest original series about video games. Read more »
You don’t necessarily need to be familiar with the subject matter of a spoof, if the execution of said spoof is good enough. Which is to say that even if you’re not a raging video game nerd,Hey Ash, Whatcha Playin’ is a delight. Read more »
Apple’s posted job listings seem to provoke no end of exciting speculation, and one of its latest open calls for applications is certainly no exception. New job postings call for a software engineer for the iPhone Gaming Group, and a video game artist. Last month’s call […] Read more »
The inevitable iPhone update is looming ever closer in the distance, and accordingly, the iPhone rumor mill is heating up. Today, news came that frequent Apple manufacturing partner Foxconn, a Taiwanese hardware company, received an order to build the new iPhone, which still won’t arrive in […] Read more »
What with its e-reader, the Kindle, and its cloud computing efforts, it can be easy to forget that Seattle-based Amazon is really an e-tailer, one that has grown to become the online equivalent of super retailer Wal-Mart. But while we all know that Jeff Bezos’ company […] Read more »
The Canadian sketch comedy group Loading Ready Run has been using its talent for gamer-skewed humor for good causes recently. Back in November, their Desert Bus for Hope charity challenge earned $70,423.79 for Child’s Play. And starting in January, they started a public service for the […] Read more »
When Acclaim Games publicly unveiled its Rockfree project, a free-to-play, web-based riff on the rhythm genre, last November, it did something unusual. It invited gamers to play an early version of the game so they could weigh in on the project as it was being developed. […] Read more »
A video of a supposed assassination attempt in Russia pops up on YouTube and clocks over 400,000 views and 1,500+ comments in under a week. The info directs viewers to MIR-12, a shadowy organization bent on uncovering a deeply rooted Russian conspiracy they claim began in the 1950s. […] Read more »
I’ve been reading a fair number of print reviews for Grand Theft Auto IV over the past few days, because when a game has a Metacritic rating of 99 and the New York Times says that it “sets a new standard for what is possible in […] Read more »
